by Diane Janes
‘What the bloody hell were you playing at?’
‘Nothing. I didn’t really do anything at all. I just took a bend too fast …’ The words tumbled out.
‘You’ve been done for drunk driving, you silly bitch! That’s not nothing.’ He swerved sharply to avoid a parked car.
‘Now who’s driving dangerously?’
‘Don’t tell me about driving. What the hell do you know about driving? You never take the car anywhere except to do the shopping.’
‘Only because you never let me.’
‘Drunk driving! Bloody hell! Drunk driving! How many have you had? It’s fucking humiliating, Wendy. What will people say when it gets round? It’s bad enough when a man gets nicked, but a woman … People will wonder what on earth you were doing. You know what they’ll think? That you were out with some fancy man.’
‘That’s ridiculous. And I wasn’t. Please don’t use that language. You never say that word.’
‘That’s what people will think. You’ll have to appear in court. You realize that, don’t you? You’ll lose your licence. That’s going to be an embarrassment – and an inconvenience. I shall have to start taking you shopping and running the kids around. Then there’s things like the dinner dances, particularly at Christmas. We’ve always relied on you driving us back. I can’t sit drinking bloody Britvics all night.’
Why not? she wanted to say. I always had to.
‘It’s going to cost us a fortune in taxis. It’s all so ridiculous, Wendy. Whatever possessed you?’
She shrank back into the seat, saying nothing. He was right. How could she, who normally drank so little, who never got tipsy, let alone staggeringly drunk, explain to people that she couldn’t drive anymore because she had lost her licence? She would be condemned as some kind of secret alcoholic, a drunkard, a failure. A failed drunk in fact, as she hadn’t managed to escape detection.
‘I got a taxi to the police station.’ Bruce was steaming on. ‘I could have asked Alec Wilson or Jack Mitchell, but what the hell was I supposed to say to them? I’ve got to go and collect Wendy from the cop shop. An accident? Oh no, Alec, she’s been run in for drunk driving.’ He pounded remorselessly on and on until the car finally came to a halt in the courtyard and she was able to escape the car and rush headlong into the kitchen, where Tara was sitting at the table, a magazine spread in front of her. She looked up anxiously as they entered the room.
‘Are you all right, Mam?’ Tara asked uncertainly. ‘Do you need some coffee?’
‘No, thank you. I’m going to take a shower.’ Dear God, did Tara imagine that she needed to be sobered up, like a teenager returning from a party?
She headed straight upstairs, unable to face Tara and desperate to escape Bruce. In the bathroom she bolted the door, shed her clothes, then ran the shower for a long time, not stepping out of it until steam all but obscured the bathroom and she had freed herself from the sense of the police station. Wrapping herself in a thick, pink towel, she consigned every stitch of the clothing she had worn that evening to the linen basket, then crept across the half landing and up the remaining stairs to their bedroom, switching out lights as she went. Bruce had left the bedroom door an inch ajar and the soft glow of a bedside light came through the gap. When she entered, she saw that Bruce was lying with his back to the door. She guessed that he would still be angry. In the car he had railed against Joan for abetting such disgraceful behaviour, but mostly against Wendy herself. He was right, of course, but now she needed his understanding. It had been a foolish mistake, two glasses of sherry instead of one (or maybe three instead of two – what did it matter now?).
She let the towel drop to the floor and lifted the bedcovers high enough to admit herself, sliding the front of her naked body down his backside, then letting her hand caress his arm and glide over the slope of his belly.
‘Bruce?’
He shifted slightly, jolting the hand away. ‘Please put the light out. It’s late.’
The coldness in his tone froze her fingers.
‘You do still love me, don’t you, Bruce?’
‘Not particularly, at this moment, no.’
She withdrew her hand sharply and pivoted to switch off the light. It was intended to be a sharp, decisive move: a demonstration that she could be angry and spiteful too, but her fingers fumbled the switch and she had to turn over fully and clumsily to engage with it, which rather spoiled the effect.
They lay back to back, keeping their bodies uncomfortably taut to avoid anything that might be construed as an invitation to intimacy. After what seemed like an eternity, Wendy heard his breathing deepen and, with all pretence gone, she turned to snuggle her body against his in the darkness.
By an unfortunate coincidence of timing, Bruce’s parents were due to stay that weekend. Wendy invariably found these visits a trial, not least because Bruce’s mother, while never offering direct criticism, always managed to imply a fault of some kind in the housekeeping arrangements. Wendy was on tenterhooks the whole weekend lest some mention be made of the episode which had resulted in her visit to the police station, but neither Bruce nor Tara made any reference to it and the younger children had been kept in ignorance. Even so, it was more of a relief than usual to wave them off the premises and, as if to expunge the house of their presence, as soon as she had closed the front door behind them, Wendy ran upstairs and stripped the spare room bed. She had just returned from the utility room after filling the washing machine when Tara came in and flopped down at the kitchen table.
‘Where’s my father?’ she asked.
‘You know perfectly well that he’s taking Granny and Gramps to get the train.’
‘Not him. I mean my real father.’
Annoyed by the derogatory tone employed for ‘him’, Wendy said crossly, ‘He is your real father. The best and most real father you’ll ever have.’
‘Oh, don’t give me all that crap.’
‘Tara!’ Wendy was shocked. Tara never spoke to her like that.
‘I don’t want to hear all that stuff about him being better than this or that. I want to know about my real father. I’ve got a right to know. I don’t even have a photograph. I never see him.’
‘Perhaps he doesn’t want to see you. Have you ever thought about that?’
‘All this make-believe,’ Tara continued. ‘Let’s pretend Bruce is Tara’s real dad. If we all pretend hard enough, maybe we’ll start to believe it.’
‘That is most unfair. We’ve never pretended to you. We’ve always told you the truth. If anything, Bruce has always spoiled you, over and above the others.’
‘You never told me anything about my father. Not anything I wanted to know.’
Wendy’s emotions left little room for a considered response. ‘All right,’ she shouted. ‘You want to know about your real father, as you call him. The man who walked out on us when you were a few months old. The man who has never asked to see you in seventeen years. The man who has never sent you a birthday card. That’s how much he cares about you, Tara. That’s how interested he is. He doesn’t even know if you’re alive or dead!’ She stopped abruptly. The words had emerged much more brutally than she had intended, and through tear-spangled lashes she saw that she had just scored a tremendous own goal.
‘Well, that’s your side of the story,’ said Tara. ‘Perhaps one day soon I’ll get to hear his.’ The chair scraped violently against the stone floor as she stood up.
‘Tara …’ Wendy held out her arms. ‘Tara, I didn’t mean …’ But her daughter was already pounding up the stairs. When Wendy followed and called her name, she didn’t respond. Wendy slowly retraced her path back to the kitchen. She must remedy this. It had to be put right. She would go and reason with Tara and apologize for losing her temper. She turned back towards the hall, just in time to hear the front door opening and closing. Tara had only run upstairs to fetch her coat and bag. Dashing over to the window, Wendy could see her marching down the drive. She could run after her, of course, bu
t suppose Tara refused to stop? She would look like an idiot, trailing her almost grown-up daughter out of the gate and along the pavement. Strictly speaking, Tara was not supposed to leave the house without saying where she was going, but on balance it seemed best to let it go. Tara seldom adopted the persona of a moody teenager. She would calm down and come home and then they could talk it out.
When Bruce returned from the station, he didn’t enquire as to Tara’s whereabouts and Wendy thought it best not to mention anything about her sudden departure or the conversation which had preceded it. There had been an uneasy truce between herself and Bruce since the night of the breathalyzer and Wendy decided not to jeopardize it by instigating the debrief that usually took place following the departure of his parents, which generally entailed her venting all the irritation she had bottled up throughout the visit, while Bruce assured her that his mother hadn’t intended to be uncomplimentary, critical or downright provocative.
Tara returned to the house just in time for tea, said little throughout the meal and disappeared to her bedroom the moment she had finished. Wendy cleared away in the kitchen, pondering the wording of her apology. She decided it would be best to postpone it until later in the evening. The more time Tara had to calm down and reflect on the real nature of her relationship with Bruce, and how truly lucky she had been to have him as a stepfather, the easier it would be. They had been later than usual with their meal, and once everything was tidy in the kitchen it was time to chase the younger children into bed. It was after nine when Wendy eventually joined Bruce in the sitting room, where he had settled himself in front of the television. Perhaps, she thought, it was time to apologize again to him too, over what she thought of as the ‘police station affair’. (The words ‘drunk driving’ were too shameful. How had they ever become applicable to her? She had been such a fool.)
‘Bruce,’ she began hesitantly.
‘What?’
At that moment the door opened and Tara made an entrance. There was something in her body language that stopped Wendy in the act of drawing breath to speak. Bruce had evidently sensed it too, because his attention immediately switched from Wendy to Tara, watching her as she crossed the room and sat down in the chair nearest the fire.
Well aware that she had their full attention, Tara announced with no little satisfaction, ‘I made a phone call today, from my friend Helen’s house.’ She paused, but received no response. ‘I spoke to my father. My real father … Robert.’
There was a short silence. Invisible electricity seemed to flicker about the room.
‘Well, that’s very nice for you,’ said Bruce. It was the voice he used for waiters or petrol pump attendants who tried to strike up a conversation with him. He stood up and left the room.
To Wendy, his exit seemed both dignified and tragic. As the door closed behind him she turned on Tara. ‘Why did you do that? How did you do it? Who gave you the number?’
‘No one gave me the number. I heard Grandma Burton saying years ago that he’d moved somewhere just south of Birmingham. I knew from my birth certificate that his initials are R.G. All I had to do was pop into Stockton Library. I went last week. They’ve got phone books for the whole country there. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes.’
‘But to announce it just like this. Can’t you see how much you’ve hurt your father … Bruce. It’s like a betrayal, Tara, don’t you see that? Good God, it’s so, so ungrateful.’ And earlier that day, Wendy thought, when Tara was asking about Robert, she already had his phone number.
‘I didn’t realize it was gratitude he wanted,’ Tara snapped back. ‘For taking on poor little orphan Annie.’
‘You’ve hurt him,’ Wendy persisted.
‘What about Robert, my real father? Don’t tell me he hasn’t been hurt. Don’t try to tell me he doesn’t care about me, because I’ve spoken to him. Did you know that he has photographs of me? That he’s always wanted to see me? Do you know what his first words to me were? “Tara,” he said. “Is it really you? This is wonderful.” That’s the word he used. “Wonderful”. He wants me to go and stay with them. Next weekend. He says he can’t wait to meet me.’
Wendy cut short the flow. ‘That’s out of the question. You’re not going. He has no right—’
‘He has every right. And so do I. He’s my father and you can’t stop me. I’m eighteen in a couple of weeks.’
Wendy was unused to dealing with outright rebellion. She stood up abruptly and went in search of reinforcements. She found Bruce sitting in the kitchen, the crossword spread out in front of him. He was using a pencil which she recognized as one of Katie’s. It was topped with a miniature horse’s head, fashioned in pastel-coloured plastic, from which a straggle of nylon mane was dangling. The scene looked ridiculous, not least because Bruce never did the crossword.
‘Bruce, will you please come and help me talk to Tara? She’s got some ridiculous idea into her head about going to spend the weekend with …’ She hesitated, not wanting to say ‘her father’. ‘With Robert.’
Bruce didn’t look up. ‘Has he invited her?’ His enquiry implied a complete lack of interest.
‘Apparently.’
‘Then she may as well go. She’d better find out where he lives and check the times of the trains.’
‘Don’t be so ridiculous, she can’t possibly go.’
‘I don’t see how you can stop her.’
Wendy stood for a moment, struggling to gain control of her feelings. Being confronted by the same truth from two separate parties was not helping.
Eventually she said, ‘I don’t want her to go.’
Bruce raised his head and regarded her with an expression she could not read. ‘Don’t be childish, Wendy. If she wants to go, I don’t see any problem with it.’
‘Me be childish! Who was it went sulking out of the door the minute Robert’s name was mentioned?’
‘I was not sulking. I don’t happen to think that this has anything to do with me. It’s between you, Tara and her father.’
‘You’re her father.’
‘No, Wendy, Robert is her father.’
‘This is ridiculous. We’re going round in circles.’
‘Shut up then,’ he snapped.
‘Bruce, you don’t seem to understand what is happening.’
‘Wendy, will you kindly stop screaming at me? Tara wants to spend a weekend with her father. It’s perfectly reasonable that she should. He’s not a child molester, is he? The more you carry on and make a thing of it, the more determined she is going to become. It’s hardly surprising that she’s curious and wants to see him. And she’s very nearly eighteen years old, which is quite old enough to make a journey by herself.’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘Then what is the point? You say you don’t want her to go. Why not? You say you don’t want her to meet her own father – again, why not? Surely that’s a decision for Tara? I think you’ve created this fantasy in which he’s the big, bad wolf, which in reality he’s not. He’s just some ordinary bloke who’d like to see his daughter.’
‘So you’re on his side.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake! I’m not on anybody’s side.’
In the days that followed, however, it felt very much to Wendy as if Bruce was on Tara’s side. It was Bruce who paid Tara’s train fare, Bruce who offered to run her to the station, and Bruce who gave her extra pocket money for the trip. In the meantime, Wendy reluctantly adopted his advice, affecting to pretend that she did not mind about the trip, ignoring Tara’s air of smugness in arranging it all, while pondering on the way in which, over a period of years, Tara must have hoarded the information that had helped her to find Robert.
It was arranged that Tara would travel down on Friday evening, catching the 18.33 from Darlington. When Jamie announced that he wanted to go to the station and see the trains, Katie hadn’t wanted to be left behind, so in the end the whole family had piled into the car to see Tara off, just as they had done in the past when she was
heading off on school trips to France and the Lake District.
It had proved unexpectedly difficult to explain Tara’s destination to Jamie. ‘If Robert is Tara’s other daddy, he must be my other daddy too. Why can’t I go and see him?’
Katie had been more interested in the news that Tara’s other daddy had children, and on learning from Tara that these children were of a similar age to themselves, Jamie wanted to know when they would be coming to stay on a reciprocal visit.
A holiday atmosphere prevailed as Bruce drove towards Darlington. The children began to play a game with the registration numbers of the cars they passed, though Wendy noticed that no one invited her to join in. They arrived on the platform with ten minutes to spare and, having already received his weekend pocket money, Jamie insisted on being taken to the shop to buy some sweets. Tara followed Jamie and Bruce, saying something about getting a magazine to read on the journey, while Katie wandered along the platform to look at a notice board about the old Stockton to Darlington Railway. Wendy was left alone with Tara’s suitcase. Judging from its weight, she assumed that her daughter had packed her entire wardrobe.
Katie returned first. ‘This was the first railway station in the whole world,’ she said.
‘Was it really?’ Wendy’s attention was focussed further up the platform. Catching trains made her nervous. Trains did not wait for people who had dispersed to buy confectionery or visit the loo.
‘When is the train coming?’ Katie asked.
‘In about four minutes. I wish they’d all hurry up.’
‘Shall I go and fetch them?’
‘No, it’s all right. Here they come now.’ She managed to stop herself making hurry-up gestures with her hands. She knew it irritated Bruce. Instead she glanced up at the clock again.
